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Oil Over $142 A Barrel

June 27, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Both gold and oil are shooting up again. I suppose part of this is due to all those IOU 'free money' checks Uncle Sam is rapidly mailing out to US voters. Funny, how this causes inflation. Moscow is delighted with the high energy prices and plans to colonize the US oil industry. Like China is moving into Brazil, Peru and Venezuela's oil industries. Russia is also poised to start taking over Afghanistan, too. As well as other former Soviet satellite nations. The price of uranium is rising faster than gold. And we learn the hazards of drilling for energy deep in the earth.

Russia's biggest energy company has warned that oil prices will end at a 'radically' new level and that OPEC has little influence over the price of crude.

Alexey Miller, chief executive of Gazprom, said that the global economy is facing "a great surge in oil and gas prices" that will "end with prices at a radically new level."

His comments to the Financial Times came as oil surged to a new high of $141.98, leaving prices more than double where they were 12 months ago and casting a shadow over the prospects for the global economy this year and next.

Russia's leaders can hardly contain their glee. Their ability to buy up all systems right out from under Europeans and Americans is rapidly rising. The US can print up endless Funny Money™ which it loans to itself so it can run Iraq and Afghanistan and intimidate and control Pakistan and all the other Stans. But the Russians are far more familiar with the cultures and mindset of the Stans and knows how to throw real money around. Like gold. Gold is a great tool for bribing people since ancient times. Purchasing alliances with gold is very ancient and was used all the way up until the Cold War.

Moscow is staging an extraordinary comeback on the Afghan chessboard after a gap of two decades following the Soviet Union's nine-year adventure that ended in the withdrawal of its last troops from Afghanistan 1989. In a curious reversal of history, this is possible only with the acquiescence of the United States. Moscow is taking advantage of the deterioration of the war in Afghanistan and the implications for regional security could be far-reaching.

A joint statement issued in Moscow over the weekend following the meeting of the United States-Russia Working Group on Counterterrorism (CTWG) revealed that the two sides had reached "agreement in principle over the supply of Russian weaponry to the Afghanistan National Army" in its fight against the Taliban insurgency. The 16th session of the CTWG held in Moscow on June 19-20 was co-chaired by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns.

The US wants control of the Stans and other places so we can exploit them for cheap energy. Russia, on the other hand, is on THEIR side of the business! Russia wants a good return on oil, not steal the oil. Russia wants oil to be high in price, not low! So there is a thing we call 'commonality.' They all have similar goals. Including the goal of destroying the US invaders! The Stans don't trust Russia, either. For obvious historical reasons. But they dearly would love to triangulate with Russia and the US. This is when one has maximum power over hostile armed foreign powers.

The Russian group is benefiting from high domestic prices he said, but also plans to expand into the Americas, Asia, Europe and Africa.

Mr Miller said: "We see North America as a region of our strategic interests", revealing that Gazprom is in the process of "creating a new configuration of gas supplies" to the US and Canada. The group hopes to break into the American market in 2014.

The Russsians are coming! The Russians are coming! This was a popular movie in the early 1960's. Well, all the oil pumping powers are coming here and they are buying us out whenever the Japanese and Chinese aren't buying everything in this international fire sale. 'Buy American! CHEAP!' is our motto. 'Bankruptcy Sales Galore! Place a bid!' Well, we go back to the paradox of who wins wars.

Who won WWII? Japan and Germany! Both can triangulate world powers and the need to strengthen and empower both Germany and Japan led the Great Empires to build both up and to make them one of the top 4 economic powers on earth! So they won. Russia and now the US were and are going bankrupt.

As described in this article published by BNAmericas, Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela S.A) and China's state oil company CNPC (China National Petroleum), have entered into a joint venture in which the two government owned oil conglomerates will work together in order to produce 8 new oil rigs by years end in Venezuela.

This adds to the two oil rigs delivered by CNPC in November 2007, and three more to come in 2009, bringing the total number of "made in China" oil rigs operating in Venezuela to 13. This will also allow Venezuela and allow PDVSA, for the first time in the country's history to construct their own oil rigs domestically... without North American or European assistance.

Who won the Cold War? Russia and China! They are getting richer, stronger and more powerful. Both are dominating world trade and making huge inroads in US power as well as taking over US finances and buying up US properties. They won that war after going bankrupt. The US refuses to go bankrupt even though this is the harsh thing one goes through to get over to the other side.

(Bloomberg) -- Refinery executives are buying more of their own stock than at any time since 2000, prompting investors to bet that a retreat in oil will boost profits and reverse the biggest share decline in a decade.

Executives at 10 refining companies snapped up $2 million of their shares last month, twice what they sold, according to data from the Washington Service, which analyzes insider patterns for 500 institutional clients. That helped raise the average level of purchases to the highest in eight years, data from Argus Research Co. compiled by Leuthold Group show. Before March, insiders dumped more shares than they bought every week since 2003.

As the price of oil shoots to $150 a barrel, perhaps the news media can lead a charge and demand the war talk aimed at Iran cease and talk about punishing Libya end. As well as all the other bully-boy American silliness. We have to eventually figure out that global oil inflation is due mostly to US actions. We decided to have cheap gasoline unlike all of the other major oil consuming nations in the West. We decided to buy a huge fleet of many millions of SUVs. We decided to go to war when oil prices were only $28 a barrel. We can't blame the Chinese for any of this. They gradually increased their oil consumption. We radically increased it both for domestic use and for our giant military adventures in the Middle East. Our military eats more oil than any single organization on earth.

Saudi Arabia — the world's top crude exporter — called the gathering Sunday to send a message that it, too, is concerned by high oil prices inflicting economic pain worldwide.

Instead, the meeting highlighted the sharp disagreement between producers like Saudi Arabia and consuming countries like Britain and the United States over the core factors driving steep price hikes. Oil closed near $135 a barrel on Friday — almost double the price a year ago.

I include this old news because it shows how infantile we are. Saudi Arabia will endlessly promise more oil and we guzzle it all and they stopped increasing oil some time ago and won't increase it much at all after this. They are triangulating with Russia. And China. Eventually we will have to offer them something substantial like say, the West Bank. Right now, we are too focused on disarming Iran and the despotic kings ruling the Arabs don't want a revolutionary Iran running about, able to defy invaders from say, Iraq. The entire concept of a revolutionary power right next door frightens and irritates them. But they don't want a war because they rightfully fear an uprising at home as well as destruction as Iran turns and attacks them, not the US.

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. consumer spending rose more than forecast in May as tax rebates drove the biggest gain in incomes in almost three years, enabling households to at least temporarily overcome soaring fuel bills.

The 0.8 percent rise in purchases was the biggest since November, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Incomes grew 1.9 percent, the most since September 2005, and measures of inflation were lower than anticipated.

Wow! We goosed our economy and paid for all this expensive oil by putting more debt on the public ledger. If we want, we can run our economy openly this way! Every four months, the US government can mail all of us $600. Then, as the price of oil rushes to $200 a barrel, we just laugh. So what if our debt soars past $10 trillion and we add another trillion a year!

Will this stop inflation or make it worse? Heh. Obviously, the more money we get from the DC criminal class, the more inflation we get! This is not a sane fix. But people don't care. They clutch at this fake money and spread it across the planet. All our trade partners want to see us spend money, too, so they are silent about this scheme to pay for all the oil via fake money. The downside is, Saudi Arabia throws in the towel and refuses to sell us oil for dollars. This can and will happen if we go down this road much further.

(Bloomberg) -- The uranium industry's worst year is about to collide with a nuclear construction program in India and China that rivals the ones undertaken during the oil crisis of the 1970s.

The result is likely to be a 58 percent rebound in uranium to $90 a pound from $57 now, according to Goldman Sachs JBWere Pty and Rio Tinto Group, the third-biggest mining company. Uranium plunged 57 percent in the past year as an earthquake damaged a Japanese nuclear plant that's the world's largest and faults shut down reactors in the U.K. and Germany.

All the speculators reading Bloomberg are in hysteria! Get me uranium! Lucky for us, we produce uranium. Maybe we can make this work out. The US has many wonderful resources. We just don't have endless CHEAP oil anymore. We didn't raise taxes on oil and cut down on gasoline use. So we now have a huge oil trade deficit. Well, this has to be fixed in the end. We must restructure our lives accordingly like everyone else on earth. Then we will be on top of things! We got STUFF here!

Staufen, in the Black Forest, was proud of its innovative geothermal power plan that was supposed to provide environmentally-friendly heating.

But only two weeks after contractors drilled down 460ft to extract heat from below the earth, large cracks have appeared in buildings as the town centre subsided about a third of an inch (8mm).
*snip*
A similar experiment triggered a series of earthquakes near Basel in Switzerland last year.

I argue all the time with people who imagine we can just suck energy of various sorts out of the earth. The earth is very complex. There are many hidden things below thanks to tectonic plate movements. When we drill very, very deep, all sorts of unexpected things can happen. The Black Forest, for example, sits on top of very complex mountain building from back when Europe was crushed in the middle of Pangea. Now, Africa is shoving Europe hard to the south and there are hidden folds and strange left overs from 200 million years ago a mile down. As we try to solve our energy problems, we must take all this in account. There is no easy way out.

The earth has a lot of deep energy! We see this with massive earthquakes and volcanic events! The volcanos prove that the earth is very, very hot just below the surface and heat is energy. But tapping this must be done with greatest care and fear. It is not an easy answer.

Comments

Funny story;

A few years ago a concrete contractor and
his wife were having a bitter dispute.He
snuck over her place in the middle of the night with one of his trucks and filled up
her SUV with concrete,blowing out all four
tires and utterly destroying the vehicle.

Funny how oil prices are now doing the same
thing to all the SUV's now. They may as well
all be full of concrete now.

"The Federal Reserve is considering making it easier for private equity firms to take large stakes in banks, without being subject to existing restrictions and commitments, as part of efforts to encourage capital-raising in the troubled US financial system."

The hedgies aren't willing to buy up the banks unless they have a free and unregulated hand afterwards -

"Olivier Sarkozy and Randal Quarles, two senior Carlyle executives, expressed dissatisfaction with these (governmental regulatory) limitations in an article published on the Wall Street Journal website on Thursday, saying they were “far stricter than necessary”.

They said: “Private equity is ready and willing to step forward in large amounts – restoring lending capacity, encouraging efficiency, and protecting the taxpayer. The Federal Reserve and other banking regulators can help remove obstacles to this important pool of capital.”

All outside accountablity getting drained
from the system. All "outside" in general
getting cloned/drained/sanitized by the
borg/system. Nothing is to be left "outside"
especially concerning thoughts/opinions.

Barracks O-BOMBA now saying he'll vote for the spying bill protecting private corporations cooperating with private government spying on the public---and all things public getting rapidly privitized.Even the Nat'l Parks.

Everything becoming inscribed/sealed up
by hidden code. Inscrutable code. All divisions/bulkheads of things getting fused together.Religion/state,work/play,police/military,home/work, etc etc. Everything going into a perfect seamless black hole where there is no escape and no "outside".

But I guess even black holes dont last forever.Sooner or later they blow up and
diversity returns. "God" becomes "gods". Maybe God himself blows himself to pieces due to sheer boredom with his holy perfection and starts all over again.

Maybe, in the END is
God, NOT the beginning as we've been lead to
believe by the bible.

Sorry for the wild ideas. But hey, these are
WILD crazy times for the few of us that were
hit by lightning--wheather metaphorically or literally.We cant seem to be programmed in the least by our borg. Resistance may be futile for most but programming is futile for
some of us.

Cheer up all of us. This grand sub-conscious
dream of the P.T.B will not succeed. The attempts may be damaging but nature demands
diversity and will always get her way.The
garden will return. Not the perfect "garden
of Eden" but the garden with a million differnt varieties of flora/fauna

Then when the Hedge Funds are done extracting their fees from the Yen Carry Trade Loans and have finished partying with them, the loans will of course default, and guess who owns the US financial system?

True, GK. The trick is, many other things made greater profits over the years. Real estate, for example, shot up. If you don't burden it with debt, it makes real profits when sold! For example, my Brooklyn Brownstone in Park Slope went from $37,000 to $2.5 million in this same time frame. WOW.

A Monet painting from 1885 went from $350,000 to $80 million in that time. So many things shot up and up. The 'rare' metals actually were the weaker performers during this time, worse: both gold and silver collapsed in price badly and then utterly stagnated for 80% of this time frame. Anyone investing in them had to wait FOREVER for this to improve. Only in the last 5 years have things finally looked up. This is the danger of statistics. If you choose to compare a valley with a peak, you see great profits.

But if you cut the time frame even slightly, the stagnant character is painfully obvious. Gold and silver didn't grow for DECADES compared to housing, stocks or other things one could invest in.

In a 1998 interview, Osama bin Laden — the terrorist organizer of 9/11 who still roams free — listed as one of his many grievances against the U.S. that Americans "have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims" by purchasing oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. The real price of a barrel of oil should be $144, bin Laden demanded.

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